Suzette Glasner, Ph.D.

Dr. Glasner is a clinical researcher and a licensed clinical psychologist with expertise in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and motivational interventions including motivational interviewing and motivational enhancement therapy. Her recent work involves efficacy trials of technology-based psychosocial interventions targeting substance users with chronic, co-occurring psychiatric and medical conditions, such as depression and HIV, in primary and mental health care settings. To this end, she has evaluated technology-based behavioral intervention for cannabis users with major depression, and developed and tested a social media component delivered via Facebook to optimize treatment outcomes from this comorbidity intervention by facilitating social network support for substance use and depression-related treatment goals. She developed and pilot tested technology-assisted interventions for adults with opioid and alcohol use disorders and multiple co-occurring chronic health conditions, using text messaging to target medication adherence and substance use. Her work spans the areas of mechanisms of change in psychotherapy, including the role of social support and the social network in facilitating health behavior change, and issues in disseminating evidence-based psychosocial treatments.

Katherine E. Watkins, M.D.

Dr. Katherine E. Watkins is a senior physician policy researcher at RAND Corporation and a board-certified practicing psychiatrist.  Watkins is particularly interested in increasing access to treatment for vulnerable populations and in improving care for individuals with mental illness and substance abuse.  Working with public sector providers, her research has focused on designing, implementing and testing evidence-based practices in community settings; integrating the delivery of mental health, substance abuse and physical health care into single systems of care; and understanding and using public policy to improve the quality of behavioral health care. Watkins led a large national evaluation of the quality of mental health care provided by the Veterans Health Administration and has developed and validated quality measures for individuals with substance use disorders. More recently, she is working to integrate addiction treatment into primary care and specialty mental health settings, using behavioral economics to change opioid prescribing practices and testing collaborative care models with different populations and in different settings. 

Watkins received her M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, completed a psychiatric residency at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she obtained her master's degree in health services.

Kate Wolitzky-Taylor, Ph.D.

Dr. Kate Wolitzky-Taylor obtained her B.A. summa cum laude in psychology from Emory University, where she completed her undergraduate research assistantship in the Trauma and Anxiety Recovery Program. She obtained her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, obtaining clinical and research training in the Laboratory for the Study of Anxiety Disorders. Dr. Wolitzky-Taylor received a predoctoral National Research Service Award (NRSA, F31) from by NIMH in order to examine self-administered behavioral treatments for pathological worry. Dr. Wolitzky-Taylor completed her predoctoral internship at the Medical University of South Carolina in the Traumatic Stress Track, where she was on an NIMH-funded trauma-related training grant (T32). She completed a 3-year postdoctoral research fellowship at UCLA in the Anxiety Disorders Research Center where she was the Project Director of the Youth Emotion Project, an NIMH-funded R01 examining common and specific risk factors for anxiety and depression. During her postdoctoral fellowship, she also provided clinical supervision and statistical consultation to clinical psychology doctoral students, operated a small private practice where she treated patients with anxiety and depression using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and taught Abnormal Psychology at USC and UCLA. Dr. Wolitzky-Taylor was the Principal Investigator on a Career Development Award in Patient-Oriented Research (K23; funded by NIDA), the focus of which was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a brief CBT program to be delivered in community substance use disorder (SUD) specialty care clinics for individuals with comorbid anxiety disorders and SUDs. She is currently the Principal Investigator for NIDA and NIAAA funded projects aimed at developing and evaluating novel treatments for comorbid anxiety and substance use disorders. Her primary research interests include understanding the nature of comorbid anxiety and substance use disorders, developing and evaluating treatments for comorbid anxiety and substance use disorders, and improving access to evidence-based treatment for anxiety and substance use disorders in community settings. Dr. Wolitzky-Taylor treats patients in the Faculty Practice Adult Outpatient Clinic in the Department of Psychiatry and the Biobehavioral Sciences and has a joint appointment in the West Los Angeles VA. She has extensive experience in training and supervising clinical psychology doctoral students and psychiatry residents in delivering CBT and in research methods.